by Olivia Drake
Chapter Twenty-six
Her heart beating in her throat, Alicia watched Drake. He stood unmoving. His narrowed eyes showed only the blankness of shock.
Silence shrouded the chamber. The coals hissed on the hearth; a clock ticked on the bedside table. James wore a stunned expression, too, his brow furrowed, the glass forgotten in his hand.
“Give me that letter,” Drake said, his voice tight.
She handed it to him. Her legs as weak as a newborn kitten’s, she sank into a chair and watched him scan the girlish penmanship. The small square of paper looked flimsy in his big hands. Yet it carried a weighty revelation.
“What does it say?” James asked in a low, shaken tone. “For God’s sake, read it aloud.”
Drake thrust the letter back at Alicia. “You do the honors.”
She wished to heaven she could spare James. Before coming here, she had given serious thought to burning the letter. But there had been enough lies already. Enough secrets.
Wetting her dry lips, she lifted the paper and gave voice to the words that were already burned into her mind: “‘Two nights ago, at midnight, I bore Richard a healthy son. Oh, my dearest Eleanor, I do wish you could see my precious boy! He is a wee mite, black of hair and blue of eyes, and I fancy I can hear you say he looks so like his mama. Richard cares not what I call him. So I have named him Drake, for my da, God rest his soul.
“Yes, it pains me to write that Richard has no interest in his son. In my letters these past months I have hidden my unhappiness, but now I must reveal the sad state of my marriage, for I am dying. And I fear Richard will deny our son.
“He accuses me of having lain with another—not true!—and declares that my vulgar blood caused a wantonness in me. This he would say, though I did guard my innocence until we plighted our troth at Gretna Green. From the start, he was jealous of every man I might speak to, whether he be footman or cleric. We were not wed a month when he returned home early from his business ventures to find a tradesman in my bedchamber, having just finished repairing the flue in the chimney. I was there, too, paying the man. Richard railed at me, and thenceforth he suspected me of the worst possible betrayal.
“Ever since, the coldness of his gaze chills me. To no avail have I begged my husband to give his blessing to our darling son. But he will neither hold Drake nor look at him. Though I will plead to my last breath, I cannot protect my child much longer. With each passing hour, my lifeblood ebbs and with it, my strength. Being alone in the world, I have no recourse but you, my dearest Eleanor. You must hide these documents, let no one see them, in particular not Richard. Safeguard them for my son, so that if the need should arise, he may prove his claim to Hailstock.
“Bless you, my lady, for helping me in my most desperate hour.’”
Alicia slowly lowered the paper to her lap. The anguished words haunted her. “The letter is signed, ‘Claire, Lady Hailstock.’”
Drake stood staring, his chest rising and falling beneath his linen shirt. For once in his misbegotten life, he looked too confounded for words.
No, she thought with a giddy sense of unreality. Drake was not misbegotten. He was Lord Hailstock’s true heir.
James braced his arms on the chair. “So where are these documents?” he demanded, his face ashen, his voice harsh. “A marriage certificate, I presume? And proof of birth?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a helpless shake of her head. “Mama is … not herself this evening, so I doubt there is any purpose to asking her.”
Drake prowled the chamber, his footsteps loud on the bare marble floor. He tunneled his fingers through his hair, mussing the black strands. “This must be a hoax. Muira Wilder bore me. She wouldn’t have lied about that.”
“Perhaps she was warned to keep silent,” Alicia suggested. “Perhaps she’d been told you would be taken from her if ever she revealed the truth.”
“Warned,” he said through clenched teeth. “By whom? Hailstock? If he’d wanted to get rid of Claire’s child, he could have smothered him.”
James brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. “My father is no murderer,” he flared. “He wouldn’t kill a baby.”
“We seem doomed to disagree about his character.”
The two men glared at each other. As if they would come to blows rather than help her find a way out of their dilemma.
“Stop, both of you,” Alicia said sharply. “Your quarreling only makes matters worse. Drake, did Muira Wilder ever say anything at all that might verify this story?”
“No. Nothing.” Then he stopped pacing, his gaze unfocused, as if he were looking inwardly at his past.
“You’ve remembered something,” she said.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Tell us anyway.”
Drake paced to the window, opening the shutters to stare out into the night. “On her deathbed … when she told me to go to London and see my father, she said, “‘I nivver could carry a bairn, lost so many till ye came along. Ye were my blessin’, my gift from heaven.’”
His husky Scottish lilt caused a prickling over Alicia’s skin. As did the message … I nivver could carry a bairn. “There, you see?” she said, a tremor in her voice. “She raised you, but she didn’t give birth to you.”
He shook his head. “She meant I was her only surviving pregnancy. She’d suffered a few miscarriages before I was born, that’s all.”
But Alicia saw the doubt in him. The subtle change from disbelief to cautious acceptance. Would he rejoice now? Would he seize his chance to exact the most punishing revenge of all?
She prayed he would not be so cruel to his brother.
James made an impatient sound. “We must find the documents proving the validity of this claim. Is Lady Eleanor truly so unbalanced that she cannot remember where she put them?”
“She has moments of sanity,” Alicia explained. “We shall have to wait for one of those times.”
“God!” With an angry push, James sent his chair careening across the chamber. He caught the wheels and spun to face her. “I cannot sit idly by, wondering if my father did such a deed. Have you searched your mother’s chambers?”
“Yes. I did so when I looked for the letters.” To steady her nerves, Alicia took great care in refolding the letter. “You should know, James, that your father has been seeking these documents, too.”
He wheeled closer. “What do you mean?”
Before she could reply, Drake pivoted. “Alicia came upon him poking through the study at Pemberton House. He said he was looking for some old papers that belonged to her father.”
“That isn’t all,” Alicia added. “Yesterday evening, while Drake and I were gone at the circus, his lordship came here and badgered Mama about a letter. I’m sure it was this letter—”
“The wretch came into my house? He upset your mother?” His hands clenched, Drake took a step toward her. “You ought to have told me so immediately.”
“I have had other things on my mind today,” she said, enunciating each word to keep from shouting back at him. “And I was about to say that I didn’t realize his purpose, or why he was so concerned about finding some old letters. Until … this afternoon.”
When she had found out that Drake was the marquess’s son. When she’d had enough time to ponder and consider and realize …
Unable to sit still any longer, she surged to her feet. “I am going to find Mama. If she has a lucid moment, I’ll ask her to show me where she hid the papers.”
With quick decisive steps, Drake strode toward her. “I’ll go with you. I’ll convince her that I’m”—he grimaced as if still fighting the truth—“Claire’s son.”
“No.” Alicia didn’t care if he saw the raw pain in her eyes. “I don’t want you with me. I will do this alone.”
He stopped as if struck. That look of fathomless intensity hid his thoughts from her. It would always be that way with him, she reflected bitterly. He would close his mind and his heart to her.
She glanced at James, who watched, his eyebrows raised. A lump in her throat, Alicia turned swiftly and left the chamber.
She clutched the folded letter to her bosom. Claire … Drake’s real mother. The reality of it still stunned her. In less than half a day, the world had turned topsy-turvy. No longer would her husband be a disreputable, baseborn scoundrel. By virtue of his birth, he would be elevated to the position of heir to one of the most powerful men in England. The doors of society would open wide to him; he would no longer need his aristocratic wife to gain entrée. She had given him the means to defeat Lord Hailstock once and for all.
And James. Drake’s triumph would strip James of his honored rank as heir to the title. That realization stabbed into her anew. All of his life he had known he would someday become the Marquess of Hailstock.
She wondered what they were saying to each other now, if Drake at least had the good grace not to gloat.
As for her, there was nothing to be done but to follow this task through to its bitter conclusion. Her slippers made a faint scuffing sound on the marble tiles, and the wall sconces cast a shadowy light over the empty passageway. Unerringly she found her way through the maze of corridors to the ballroom, situated in the opposite wing.
She would see if Mama was there, still engaged in her playacting. She might coax an answer from her tonight. And if not, tomorrow she would take Mama back to Pemberton House and wait until the right moment presented itself.
A glimmering of light shone from the huge archway of the ballroom. She had toured this chamber once, to inspect the housekeeping. The floors were kept polished, the woodwork pristine, the windows gleaming. Mrs. Yates had said the room had never been used.
But now Drake could host parties here. He could invite all of the ton. He would do so alone. He didn’t need her, and Alicia didn’t need him.
Marching through the doorway, she saw that gloom shrouded the Venetian-blue walls and the tall pillars, the ornate plasterwork on the high ceiling. The faint illumination came from one end of the ballroom, where magnificent gold draperies framed a dais for an orchestra. There, two oil lamps sat at opposite ends of the raised floor. Between them, a wing chair substituted for a throne. On a table, a silver tea service gleamed in the meager light.
Her footsteps made a whispering noise that vanished into the vast darkness. Beyond the throne, her mother’s diminutive form stood in the shadows cast by the curtains. Beside her loomed a tall, black form in the garb of a man. Had Mama convinvced Mrs. Philpot to dress as a courtier?
Alicia felt a faint smile penetrate her unhappiness. But as she approached, her brief humor dissipated.
Something lay curled on the floor beside the dais. She strained her eyes to make out what it was. In growing horror, she recognized the glint of silver hair, the paleness of a face, the body lying motionless.
Mrs. Philpot.
Alicia’s gaze snapped to her mother. Mama was struggling against … a man. They weren’t playacting, either. Alicia could hear their panting breaths, his low curses.
She rushed to the dais and hastened up the short steps. “Mama!”
In that same moment, the man turned to look. Recognition struck. Alicia stopped dead, her heart beating so fast she felt on the verge of a swoon.
For through the darkness, she spied the glint of metal as he pressed a dueling pistol to her mother’s head.
“Come closer, my lady,” Lord Hailstock said. “You’ve saved me the trouble of going in search of you.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
The marquess prodded his prisoner into the lamplight. Resplendent in a medieval gown of richly embroidered crimson, Lady Eleanor carried herself like the queen she fancied herself to be. She wore the tattered moleskin cape like the finest ermine stole. A circlet of gold held a flowing blue veil over her silvering flaxen hair.
She raised her arm in an imperious gesture. “Send for the guards, my lady! They must arrest this treasonous knave! He would dare to put his hands upon my royal person.”
Lord Hailstock gave her a shake. “Hush your mouth, Eleanor. Lest I stuff a gag into it.”
Glaring at him, she pressed her lips shut.
To give herself a moment to calm her frenzied fear, Alicia sank into a deep curtsy. “Greetings, Queen Eleanor,” she said, willing her voice not to quaver.
If she shouted for help, Lord Hailstock might shoot Mama. If she rushed at him, both she and her mother could be injured. He was far stronger than either of them.
Oh, why had she not allowed Drake to accompany her?
Because he had deceived her. Because he had destroyed her trust in him. And now she had only her own wits to rely upon.
“What have you done to Mrs. Philpot?” she asked, hoping to distract Lord Hailstock.
“The beldam suffered a little knock on the head. After she ordered me out of here.”
Her belly clenched. To think she had once believed him to be an honorable man. “Put the pistol away, my lord,” she said, striving for composure. “You’re frightening me.”
“As well I should. Perhaps you will convince this madwoman to reveal her hiding place.”
“Hiding place?” Alicia stalled.
“She has something in her possession that I want. And I believe you know what I mean.”
In the lamplight, his menacing gaze bored into her. Instinctively wanting to back up, she held her ground. “You shall have to explain yourself. You are being very obscure.”
“And you are being deliberately obtuse.” He pushed his captive closer, making Mama circle around the chair. “I suspected you might piece the puzzle together once you found out about Wilder’s claim,” he added. “You know too much of Claire’s story.”
“Claire?” Mama said sharply. “What have you done with my lady-in-waiting? If you’ve harmed her, sirrah, I shall have you thrown into the darkest of dungeons!”
He ignored her, his frosty gray eyes intent on Alicia. “What is that paper in your hand? That looks like Claire’s handwriting.”
Alicia clutched the folded letter to her bosom. Lord Hailstock would destroy it. With the documents missing, it was the only proof of Drake’s claim. She had to preserve it, to let him make his own choices.
Wracking her brain, she stepped closer, keeping Lord Hailstock within her sight. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement near the shadowed doorway to the ballroom.
A twitch of black skirts. A white mobcap on flame-red hair.
Her heart leapt. Mrs. Yates. Would the housekeeper go for help? Or would she see this as a chance to rid herself of Alicia once and for all?
* * *
In his brother’s new bedchamber, Drake strode back and forth, his footsteps clicking on the marble floor. He still could not believe that Muira Wilder wasn’t his true mother. Yet she had been a mother to him in all the ways that mattered. Even when they’d had nothing, she had scrimped to put food on the table. She’d given him a happy childhood, and he would always love her for that.
Claire had loved him, too. Her dying wish had been to secure his rights as Hailstock’s heir.
Drake took a deep breath. He ought to be considering his windfall. Never in his gambling days, when he had amassed his fortune with single-minded ruthlessness, had he ever dreamed of taking so perfect a revenge on Hailstock.
He was Hailstock’s heir. He would be welcomed by the finest families in England. He could walk among them, their equal.
Hailstock’s equal.
But not even that triumph could distract him from the restlessness inside himself. He wanted Alicia with him. He wanted her to amuse him with her witty commentary, to seduce him with her smiles. But she had made her feelings for him all too clear.
I don’t want you with me. I will do this alone.
His chest tightened. She had been referring to more than questioning her mother. Alicia didn’t need him. Not ever.
His hands steepled beneath his chin, James sat near the fire and watched him pace. “She’ll
forgive you. Alicia isn’t one to hold a grudge.”
A grudge? Would to God it was only that. “How do you know what I’m thinking?” he said irritably. “I could be gloating about stripping you of your title.”
“If you were gloating, you wouldn’t be prowling like a caged panther.”
Halting, Drake pivoted toward his younger brother. Now that the initial shock was over, James looked remarkably unperturbed. “And why aren’t you cursing me?” Drake asked. “I’m about to rob you of your future.”
James shrugged. “A future based on falsehoods doesn’t appeal to me.” Maneuvering his wheeled chair to a table, he set down his glass with a decisive thump. “First thing tomorrow, I shall consult my solicitor. He’ll know how to handle such an unusual matter.”
“It’s too soon,” Drake objected. “The proof may never be found. That letter alone won’t hold up in court.”
“The papers will turn up eventually. Alicia will find them.”
“And I shall destroy them,” Drake snapped. “I do not aspire to be the next Marquess of Hailstock.” His own words stunned him. God help him, it was true. All of his life he’d craved having the power to bring down Hailstock. But vengeance wasn’t what he wanted anymore. He had no desire to bear the name of the man he had hated for so long.
James rolled closer. “You haven’t a choice,” he said in a hard-edged voice. “You have a duty to the children you’ll sire.”
No one else knew that Alicia’s body already sheltered a new life. And Drake couldn’t admit aloud to the fierce tenderness that gripped him. “I can provide for my family,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t need Hailstock’s money.”
“Curse you, it’s their heritage I’m talking about. Your son will be a peer. Your daughter will be called ‘lady.’ Don’t let your stupid, selfish pride stand in the way of them claiming their noble lineage.”
“I want my children to grow up believing all people are equal. The nobility is hardly the place to accomplish that.”
“Then it’s up to you to raise them to be thinkers and benefactors. And keep in mind, if you deny them their birthright, you’ll be just like Father.”